Buying Guide – Golf Socks

Deciding which socks you should wear to play golf, is not as straightforward as you might think. Granted, it is pretty simple when you are planning on wearing trousers, but if you want to wear shorts it is a whole different matter.

Let’s cover the easy case first; if you are planning on wearing trousers you can pretty much wear whatever socks you want and you won’t fall foul of any dress codes. Plus if you follow these three additional tips you’ll be all set:

1. Wear comfortable socks as you don’t want to get blisters if you happen to be zig-zagging the fairway.2. If you're playing in Scotland in the winter, wear warm socks, as you don’t want to freeze your toes off - they are important for walking.3. Don't wear white socks. We can’t think of any instance where it's a good idea to wear white socks with trousers. Unless maybe if you’re wearing white shoes and white trousers, but then you’re probably in the navy and so you’ll get a uniform anyway. But I digress.

So to summarise; comfortable, warm, non-white socks are the order of the day when golfing in trousers.

Now let’s explore the more complicated question of what socks to wear with your golf shorts.

The most traditional approach is wearing knee length socks. The benefits of this are that you won’t get in trouble from the members of the stuffiest of clubs and they will protect your legs if you’re wading around in the gorse and nettles. We’re bright traditionalists at Royal & Awesome and so bright long socks are our favs.

The other end of the sock spectrum is the ankle sock. These little beauties hardly show above your shoe and basically stop you getting blisters or sweaty shoes, while allowing maximum tanning. Some super strict golf clubs don’t allow these socks but thankfully that is getting less and less common. Quite a few clubs will insist that ankle socks need to be white though. If you want to be really safe, check the golf club’s website to see what ridiculous dress code they have in place or carry some (Royal & Awesome) long socks in your bag, just incase.

Then obviously there are lots of socks available that are longer than ankle socks and shorter than knee length socks; from sports socks to work socks. Whether or not these meet the dress code of the course will vary, but really why take the risk? It’s not a great look anyway.

So we’ve covered trousers and shorts, but if you happen to be a super funky golfer who likes to rock Plus Twos (link to our category page)or Plus Fours then it’s got to be long socks for you.

Incase you actually wanted some hard-core facts and features about the Royal & Awesome socks here you are: